Detroit Public TV

Our DJC partners at Detroit Public Television have another Detroit-focused MiWeek program. With guest co-host Nancy Kaffer from the Detroit Free Press, the team talks about this week’s negotiations regarding the $350 million needed from the state to seal the grand bargain for Detroit’s bankruptcy. Also, they analyze the anger over the state’s policing of Belle Isle. If you missed the broadcast, we’ve got it online.

Don’t rebuild. Instead, rethink, urge filmmaker Carrie LeZotte and author John Gallagher. And if you want to see what can result when that happens in challenged cities like Detroit, tune in to our Detroit Journalism Cooperative partner DPTV at 9 p.m. to see the documentary film, “Lean, Mean and Green.” It offers a glimpse of Detroit’s freshest, forward-looking projects and some in other cities that maybe can help drive some ideas here.

LeZotte, like many of us, took inspiration from Detroit Free Press writer Gallagher’s recent works: “Reimagining Detroit: Opportunities for Redefining an American City” and “Revolution Detroit: Strategies for Urban Reinvention.” Indeed, the pair are among the top books I recommend to people who say they want to understand Detroit. In a city where the past, of course, is prologue, Gallagher both respects the history of the city and its people and looks forward. He asks AND answers questions about what new history could be written.

While doing so, he visits urban farms, business incubators, specialty museums, public art projects, outdoor recreation centers and other creative public, private and community ventures. LeZotte is there with a camera, and what results is an energetic, inspiration, people-focused story about what’s possible here in Detroit.

Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr had been publicly discussing cuts of up to 34 percent to pension payments. So when the agreements were announced that included 4.5 percent reductions for non-uniform groups and zero cuts for police and fire, many were surprised.

McDonald broke down the process on the program.

You don’t come to the table first with your best deal. You have to start the negotiation. And those negotiations have been coming fast and furious ever since the city put its first plan of adjustment on the table about a month or so ago, which really is the road map of how Detroit is going to get itself out of bankruptcy.

For his columns about Detroit’s financial crisis, Detroit Free Press Editorial Page Editor Stephen Henderson took the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for commentary today. His columns, the judges wrote, were “written with passion and a stirring sense of place, sparing no one in their critique.” Henderson is a Detroit native.

Henderson also is a host of “MiWeek” and “American Black Journal,” both weekly programs on Detroit Public Television, a partner in the Detroit Journalism Cooperative. He has worked as a reporter, editorial writer and editor at the Baltimore Sun, the Chicago Tribune, the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader and the Knight-Ridder Washington Bureau, where he covered the U.S. Supreme Court from 2003-2007.

WDET is a public service of Wayne State University. 2015 WDET 101.9 and Wayne State University. All Rights Reserved. This Material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed in any form.